Dead water

“They whip the tar outa you, do they catch you again!”

“I'll be careful.” January took up the empty sack from the floor to hold his jacket and top-hat. It's not even noon yet, he thought, glancing at the angle of the hot yellow splinters of light that fell through the shed's cracks. The Silver Moon can't be leaving this soon. . . .

Christmas sighed. “You're a braver man than I, son.” He held out his hand, callused and hard in January's answering grip, a workingman's hand. No milk-fed seminarian, this one, January thought: here was one of the few people January had encountered who looked like he could actually take on Jubal Cain and maybe win. “But loyalty is one of God's hall-marks, and I'm not going to argue with it, even if I think it's misguided. My only request is that you mention this to no one, not even your master . . . no one. It's astonishing how information spreads along the river, and you know that we of the Underground Railway operate at the risk of our lives.”

This was true, January knew. The slave uprisings of Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey were still fresh in the minds of those who saw black faces outnumber white wherever they turned. There were many in the slave states —and in the North as well—who regarded both the Underground Railway and the Abolitionist movement as encouragement and assistance to another slave uprising. Already there had been instances of retaliatory violence and murder.

“I'll be silent, sir.” January pressed that callused hand again. “You go with God.”

“And you, sir.”

“You, too, Bobby.”

And the young man flashed him a shy grin. “He must be one good master. But I still think you crazy.”

“You change your mind, son,” added Christmas, “you come down to the Stump. It's a tavern at the end of Silver Street, under the hill. They know me there—and they know how to keep their mouths shut.”

January glanced through the shed door to make sure the coast was clear, then stepped out into the hot, hushed morning sunlight. As he crossed the street to make his casual and hopefully inconspicuous way back to the Imperial Hotel, he glanced back. He saw Christmas and Bobby step out and stroll away toward the road that led back down under the hill. Bobby followed behind, like a respectful servant should—the way January was careful to follow behind Hannibal. He prayed the boy would get to safety.

Nobody molested him on his way back to the hotel. Even in the shabby jacket he'd gotten from Christmas he was sufficiently respectable-looking not to cause comment, and there were plenty of other black men, slaves or free, on the streets. At least, he reflected, Weems and Fischer would be well and truly gone from the hotel by this time. He tried not to hurry his steps, but he wondered what he would do if the trunks had been taken inside already. Try to talk his way in as Mr. Weems's manservant? An employee of the steamboat company would be a better ruse. An irregularity, a mix-up of trunk lables, We have to make sure this isn't Mrs. Johnson's that was taken off by mistake. . . . Would they believe that? I just need a quick look inside; Mrs. Johnson's given us a list of the things that should be there. . . .

Then at least he could get word back to Rose about how things stood, and see how much time he had before the boat left. Surely they wouldn't leave with such respectable gentlemen as Roberson and Davis ashore having a visit with friends and family.

January turned down the side-street to the Imperial's rear yard just as a dray emerged from the gate, driven by a couple of sulky bearded men in slouched hats. As January passed it, wondering if he could manage to pick the locks on the trunk if he did find them still in the yard and unobserved, he saw, under the canvas covering thrown over the dray's load, the glint of brass trunk-corners and the dull greenish leather that was instantly recognizable.

Heading back for the boat, he thought sourly. So the whole thing was a ruse after all, designed to smoke out pursuers. Designed, in fact, to stop us here, to lure us ashore where we could be dealt with. . . .

But in that case, why pay to have bogus chests taken back on board?

Or are they going elsewhere? To some house or receiving-office in Natchez? Did Weems and Fischer actually intend to stay for a time, until they recognized Hannibal?

January trailed the cart down Silver Street, and into the criss-crossed mangle of alleyways that spread along the feet of the bluff. Due to the lowness of the river the streets were fairly firm, but in high water at least a quarter of the buildings, to judge by the height of the stilts on which they stood, must flood. Crazy lines of duckboards zig- zagged among the sheds and shacks, and rude stairways ascended walls or rises of the ground. Mosquitoes hummed everywhere under the shadows of the houses, where weeds grew rank in standing puddles.

The dray was definitely not going back to the boat.

January recalled Mrs. Fischer's sharply intelligent dark glance, and the cool command in her voice. You're not touching a dime. . . .

He could easily imagine her as at home in Natchez-Under as she was in the Ladies' Parlor, sympathizing with Mrs. Tredgold about the proper methods of disciplining children.

He hung back as far as he could behind the dray, and thanked God that the blistering heat seemed to be keeping most of the troublemakers indoors. A couple of the black whores, and one who might have been Cuban or Mexican, called out to him from their windows, but he only smiled and waved and shook his head, and tried to look as unobtrusive as possible. Toward the end of Silver Street the ground grew sodden: here the river had cut in behind the last of the buildings and the ground sloped down to a sticky morass of dessicated gray weeds and puddles teeming with crawfish and gnats. On the edge of this slough, the buildings all stood on stilts, and the farthest out—whose rickety gallery was occupied by half a dozen drinkers spitting tobacco down into the water— was reached by a crazy plank gangway that stretched from its door to terra firma. Beneath it the shore currents surged sluggishly around the pilings that held it up, and little drifts of leaves, tree-branches, and what looked like the dead body of a British sailor snagged up against them, to provide footing for legions of rats.

Before this crooked gangway the dray drew rein, and January saw next to the gangway a roughly painted sign announcing the building to be the Stump.

And the man waiting for the dray at the bottom of the gangway, with an ax and pry-bar in hand, was none other than the Reverend Levi Christmas.